Review: Plextor 128GB SSD

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All the cool kids are playing SSDs these days. So much so that every manufacturer wants of piece of the sweet cherry pie. Even Plextor who was previously known as an optical drive/media company has a set of 64GB and 128GB SSDs available now. Too bad these options tastes more like a supermart-made pie than your grandma’s home cooking.

Features:

128GB capacity

64MB on-board cache

SATA II interface

MSRP of $399

Pros

It’s an SSD so it’s quiet and rugged

Cons

Slower than other drives at same price point

No TRIM support

Review:

SSDs are all about speed. That’s all that really matters so I’ll cut to the chase. This drive is fast, where fast means it’s quicker than standard spinning disk hard drives. And it should be since it’s a SSD hard drive. But it’s also slow as it has noticably slower read/write speeds verses other SSDs in the same price range.

This is important. Only a niche group of computer enthusiasts are willing to drop $400 on a 128GB SSD hard drive. It’s crazy expensive when 1TB desktop drives can be had for around $70. Obviously these people are willing to spend good cash for speed.

But this first generation Plextor simply cannot stand up to late generation drives from Corsair, Crucial, or OCZ. I tested the SSD using HD Tune Pro 4.01 and it’s slower than even the year-old OCZ Vertex 120GB model.

The advice here is to pay attention to your SSD purchase. There are a ton of different options available now and not all of them are worth your money — like this Plextor drive. But that’s just because of its high price. It’s a fine drive and I would have no qualms about having it in my computer, but it needs to be priced at least a $100 less.